


Reckless

by BRobeast



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 01:14:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16964940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BRobeast/pseuds/BRobeast
Summary: A collection of Shatt short stories for a Yeehaw AU inspired by Red Dead Redemption II and too many hours of listening to The SteelDrivers.





	Reckless

**Author's Note:**

> Blame Red Dead for this. And also Kunfetti for being a wonderful enabler ♥️!

It’s not a land for men like us anymore. Things are changing, changing faster than any outlaw could really find themselves comfortable with. This little group, the last of our kind, and I find myself wishin’ we’d already up and moved on.

I don’t like “civilization” much. It’s suffocating. The air is real thick and hard to fill your lungs with. I just want to head back west. Hell- I’d head north as long as it was far enough away from this rotten city that I didn’t have to smell those smoke stacks on the breeze ‘stead of the crisp air of the wild spaces still left. If I don’t have to wake up to the sound a tug boats and train whistles another day...well...I’d be fine with that.

…’cept Allura don’t see much use in goin’ backwards…

It’s always forward with that brilliant, stubborn, woman. I’d have half the mind to question her sanity if she didn’t prove me better over the last twenty years. Ideas. She always got ideas- wild ones too. And those wild ideas? They been workin’ out just fine- save this last job.

Lance fancies himself a vault man- arguably he’d be right, but down in Saint Denis he certainly wernt. Kept complaining’ bout these new locks and the like. I’ve never been the type. So, I’ll just take his word for it.

Lawmen descended on us before he got the second lock cracked. We made a run for it. Exchanging’ gunfire with the fine folk of the Saint Denis deputy Sheriff. Hunk took a bullet to the leg and been dealin’ with that the whole ride north. A right mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.

Maybe we lie low now. Finally.

But knowin’ this group that ain’t gonna be the case. If it is it won’t last for long. 

 

\- - - 

 

It had been a spell of good weather which was something that Mr. Matthew Holt knew better than to waste. 

He’d been trying to hunt down alligator in the god forsaken swamps of Rhodes and just about had it when the rain hadn’t let up by the fourth day. His feet were wet and sore in soaked shoes. His skin itched and crawled- feasted on by all manner of insect. Angry red bumps stood as violent testament to their war path. 

His short stint in the north had been easier. Well, bug wise. There wasn’t much left to buzz about when the very air he breathed froze in front of his face. Then again he was freezing to his own death thanks to being horribly underprepared for the cold.

If he hadn’t been so ferociously determined to photograph all of this fine country’s greatest fauna he would have thrown in the towel then, but this was important work. A few people back home in New York thought he was suffering from some sort of illness of the mind. All naysayers. He’d show them.

Matt dragged the tripod for his camera behind him as he weaved his way through thick sprawling trees and ducked beneath Spanish moss. The back leg of the stand drug behind him in the thick, viscous, mud leaving a deep trail in his wake. The croon of spoonbills and blue crane howled through the thick, wet, air that held to streaks of sunlight, sticky and heavy. 

The cuffs of his slacks were clod with potent mud. His shoes caked with remnants of the bayou. His dress socks, once a tasteful green argyle, now ragged, dark, and soaked all the way through. At least his vest seemed to be holding up as best it could, but his stand collar, white, shirt had been speckled with mud flicked up from the heel of his shoes. The fabric at his back was soaked in sweat no doubt. 

He didn’t have much time to worry over the clothes on his back, however, because a few feet ahead was a low, rumbling, hiss.

“Perfection…” he whispered to himself.

An alligator was close. Straight ahead now as he shifted his position, pulling the tripod in front of him, and lifting his camera from beneath his arm. Amber eyes stared at the tripod in consideration for a moment.

It would have been much more impressive- more compelling even, if he got to the alligator’s level. Trying to get the perfect angle with a tripod would have taken a great deal of work, especially with an animal so low to the ground, unless he had something to scare it his way from a distance. And if Matthew had been anything on this journey of his; it was alone. Save for finally being able to see his little sister now that he was back in the town where they’d spent their childhood. Why she decided to stay in Rhodes he’d never know...

No, the tripod would be of no use.

Instead the photographer slowly lowered himself onto his stomach, grimacing as the wet swampy floor soaked through his vest. The tall, stiff, grass sprung up from soggy mud like stubborn fingers reaching towards the blue sky over head all around him. 

Now to put the camera on something still, something that could hold its position perfectly for the shot. Matt gently set his camera down on the earth in front of him. Thank his lucky stars it seemed to be the firmest earth he’d run across since arriving. Someone out there was clearly looking out for him.

Fine weather.  
Fine subject.  
Fine earth.

_HHHHHHHSSSSSSSSSKKKKKKKKK_

….and a fine mess….

At his back was the very same rumbling hiss that had prompted him to lay on his stomach in the steaming muck of the bayou. It was hard to tell if the alligator at his back saw fit to make him breakfast or simply had a bone to pick with the fellow in front of him and Matt was surreptitiously in the way. 

Matt swallowed, hard, the motion of it producing a hard gulping sound in his throat. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all. The alligator in front of him looked to be the size of a horse. He could only pray that was some kind of anomaly and the creature at his back would be…

He slowly turned his head, gripping his camera tightly in hands in case he would have to make a run for it. He wouldn’t be leaving without it. It had taken the majority of his savings and staying in rooms at saloons across the country hadn’t been gentle on his pocket either. 

Amber eyes lifted, starring over the heels of his ruined shoes to- 

Small! It was a little guy! 

Oh! What a day! What luck!

He smiled to himself- as if somehow the grand stroke of luck had been his doing. The aim would be to snap this picture quickly, before anything else decided to join them on the small mound of semi-solid earth amoung the water, and get out of there. After all he’d seen a gathering of egrets over by the bridge to Saint Denis the other day and it was anything if picturesque. He’d been wanting to return to the city since he’d left- for reasons other than the miserable conditions outside of it. He’d assure you.

But in that moment he watched as the petit bayou resident snapped its prickly jaws around the legs of his tripod and proceeded to give it a solid death roll. Matt scrambled to his feet without a thought to his safety, or the fact he’d be spooking a creature that looked like it came from the pits of hell only a few feet ahead of him. His camera in tow, tucked beneath his right arm, he reached forward to snatch the top half of his tripod. His wrist and fingers twisted with the beginnings of a second death roll- this one with more gusto thanks to the addition of resistance on the tripods part. The alligator seemed quite pleased with itself until Matt’s yelp of pain sent it wading backwards and an alarming speed.

Even more so alarming was that it didn’t seem willing to let go of the camera equipment. 

Matt stumbled forward, reaching for what was left of the tripod still sticking out of the water, as the alligator retreated. The motion and the noise had been enough to stir the napping giant that lured Matt into this hell swamp in the first place. It swung its massive head to the side, twisting its body in tow, before a solid...horrifying...foot stamped all of the moisture out of the earth beneath it.

A thunderous thud of power.

“....oh no….” he whimpered, his back straight.

A second ground shaking thud and the photographer took off. He gripped his tripod tight, squeezed the body of his camera against his ribs, and _ran_ with very little regard for the little fellow he had taken on the journey with him.

The rush of his violent heart beat had been drowned out by the sound of a solid, scaled, body roaring behind him. The smaller alligator left to flop ridiculously at his heels. He wasn’t sure if he was running further into the wild or further away. Everything looked the same in that place. 

What he had been completely unaware of was the audience his little debacle held; a stunned (and thoroughly amused) man watching on from the back of his Appaloosa.

“.....what in all of hell’s blazes….” He chuckled, watching the violent whip of alligator tail as the tripod in the swamp man’s hands bounced and twisted.

The ridges of thick spines disturbed the grass behind him and the man on horseback sighed, pressing the bare heel of his boots into the mare’s side. Unlike the swamp man his horse certainly knew better and chuffed in disagreement. The reigns pulled tight in her teeth in protest.

“I know, I know,” he empathized, “but this feller is fixin’ to be breakfast. _Someone_ oughtta help.”

...Matt was a goner…certainly a goner!

He’d run out of land to sprint on and found himself wading through a small trough of water in order to make it to the mainland- Or just more land that what he currently found himself on. There was a chance there was more alligators in there, or that the water was deep enough for the beast to swim (god forbid), but it was that or run head first into the jaws of death.

Matt could be a accused of lacking survival instinct, but he wasn’t _that_ malnourished in it. 

Murky water sprayed up along the sides of his thighs as he hit the middle of the water straight. He prayed, he prayed hard enough he was sure that would be another muscle pulled in the frenzy of activity he found himself in.

The whoop of another person behind him barely registered. The rhythmic stomp of hooves and the rush of displaced water against a broad chest all swallowed up by prayers for survival. His legs shook, tried, and the photographer all but crawled onto the bank. His tripod was free, the smaller alligator having took off on better endeavors once pulled into the water. His heart ached. His chest burned. He held fast to this camera. He squeezed his eyes shut.

May his death be swift then.

. . .

. . .

. . .

 

“Have you up and died on us, mister?”

The slow plod of horses hooves through soft earth padded a few feet from him. The jingle of tack shifted. He could hear the heavy breathing of the talking horse that had just saved his life close to his ear. Tickling him into movement- he was certainly too tired to inspire on his own.

Matt cracked an eye open, figuring it rude to ignore his equine savor, only to find one of those southern types staring down at him. He looked like a right cowboy even without a hat. The thick belt sling across his hips held a revolver. The rifle strapped to the side of his horse’s saddle shone bright in the southern sun. The bow slung behind him worn and wooden. Hanging on either side of the horses hips were-

His stomached clamped down, sending him heaving and writhing. 

...boars…

Matthew Holt wasn’t so far removed from his food to not understand where it came from, but it had been a long time since he’d seen a dead animal. Especially one that didn’t look right appetizing even before it was slung over the back of a horse and tossed about in the elements. 

The cowboy blinked, offering a hand down to Matt from where he sat on his horse.

“...you alright…?” He asked tentatively. 

“...I...I will be…” Matthew sighed, leaving the tripod on the ground in favor of the other man’s hand, and pushed up onto his feet.

“You need a ride back to…”

“Rhodes. Yes,” he replied, flustered, and still trying to catch his breath and wits, “thank you, sir.”

The man slid his foot out of the stirrup on Matt’s side and the photographer pressed his foot into the hold, throwing his opposite leg over the side. The cowboy laughed, dropping down to grab the tripod and hand it back to Matthew before climbing back into his saddle.

“T-thank you! Sorry for the trouble and thank you for the help, Mr?”

“Shirogane.”

“Mr. Shirogane,” he smiled, leaning his weight forward on the horse to avoid flipping off the back, “Holt. Matthew Holt.”

That was the last thing he needed today.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Holt,” Shiro smiled, urging his horse on through the muck with an easy press of his heels, “mind if I ask what it is you’re doing out here? ‘Sides making friends with the locals ‘course.” 

Matthew could hear the light hearted tease in the man’s voice, despite not being able to see the lazy smile on his lips.

“Well, I uh- I’m a scientist of sorts…”

“A scientist, hm?”

The man in the saddle looked as worn as the boars. Tired in his bones no doubt, but in someway it translated as strength in the calluses of his hands and the crows feet at the corners of brown eyes. The hair at his brow had been streaked with white strands in a way that would betray age if Shirogane hadn’t looked a decade younger elsewhere. 

“I’ve been studying the creatures in this country. Making a book even! I need pictures though. I want people to really see just how beautiful these animals are.”

The beginnings of civilization passed on either side of them. Tiny shacks, homes, of dark wood half warped by the moisture in the area stood tall above the plots of tobacco. He could smell it in the air now that the sun has warmed the air. The smell of the leaves was sharp and earthy, mixed with the lighter scent of the dogwood trees in blossom. 

“Mm, the big feller was a real looker.” Shiro grinned, turning to look over his shoulder at Matt, leaving his horse the autonomy to make its way down the beaten path.

“Oh, laugh it up Mr. Shirogane,” Matthew laughed, pushing his shoulder into the cowboy’s back, “This is important work. Someone has to do it and I dare say I’d like that person to be me.”

And he did want it to be him. Despite his recent set backs in Rhodes Matthew did love the outdoors despite being ill suited for them. The south was a different beast from the wilderness up north. 

The people too. 

He’d accidentally stumbled into a group of folk who thought the war was still going on. Be it far from him to try to convince them otherwise. He’d never been so flattered to be called a yankee pretty boy in his life. The sage colored ribbon that gathered strawberry hair into a low ponytail hadn’t been likely to help his case, but he wasn’t about to cut it off to appease some angry, delusional, farmers. Matt would take village pretty boy over being anything else this far down. 

“Just don’t get yourself eaten there.”

“Well, I will admit I’m not the best suited for the ‘surviving in the wilds life’, but I do hope I learn quick. Thank you again. I am forever in you debt.”

“Think nothin’ of it. Takes a real bad kinda person to watch a fella get picked off by an alligator.”

It took rightly not wanting to be eaten alive yourself to watch a person get bested by a hungry alligator. He couldn’t help, but notice that despite the gruff dialect Shirogane didn’t much sound like a southern boy. At least not a Rhodes type and certainly not the same accent as over in Largas. 

“Well, you’re a real good kinda person then, Mr. Shirogane!”

A kind person and right mystery. 

“...Mm...I wouldn’t say that,” a low, somber reply,”just ain’t the fellow man bein’ breakfast sort apparently.”

If the devil could sing- a right mystery indeed! Had he been any other sort of book author he’d have loved to ask, but his place was noting animals and conversing with people he owed his life to. 

“This is it,” Matthew chirped, patting the broad shoulder in front of him, leaving the tripod to rest across his thighs, “and whatever sort you find yourself to be. I do hope you are the sort that will let a man return a favor.”

“You don’t owe me a thing, Mr.Holt.”

“Well, I disagree. As my ledger here,” he mimed opening a book with his free hand, nodding solemnly,”says I owe one Mr. Shirogane drinks at the saloon down on Richters rd. And by all means this ledger is law my good sir.”

“Well,” a deep, rumbling chuckle, “who am I to defy law, I s’ppose.”

 

“A true and righteous man you are, Mr. Shirogane!” The photographer grinned, pulling his tripod from the speckled horse’s back, “and I am so very sure I will see this law abiding citizen at the saloon tonight at say...8pm?”

“...8pm, then,” Shirogane smiled, before clicking his tongue to spur his horse into an easy walk, “until next time, Mr.Holt.”

“Until next time, Mr. Shirogane!” 

 

\- - -

 

Met a real strange feller today on the way back to camp. A character to be sure. Found him having a fit in the swamp just south of Rhodes. Says he’s a kind of scientist. An animal scientist whatever that may be- and writing a book ‘bout it.

Matthew Holt.

Mr. Holt nearly got himself eaten and not bein’ the type to let a man get eaten by prehistoric monsters we spooked him off. Atlas weren’t too happy ‘bout it, but I do believe she will forgive me. 

Not entirely sure if he had a horse with him, or walked that far out all his own, but either way it don’t make that man being close enough to kiss a gator any less ludacris. 

Can’t tell if he’s brave or just naive…

We was supposed to meet up at the saloon tonight, but the Galra boys done found the little camp we set up. Maybe some things just aren’t meant to be. No good deed and all that. 

They sent a wagon in...packed fulla dynamite. Horses eyes were buggin’ nearly out a there skulls. They’d either been given a good whack to send ‘em in or they just knew they were strapped to a wagon full a trouble. Shots from the trees didn’t help none. We beat ‘em this time, but they’ll be breathing down our necks down here. More so when they catch wind a what happened. 

On the move again...who knows where. Mr. Lotor and Miss Allura are fixin’ to head us all further North.

I’d be lyin’ if I said I wasn’t the least bit relieved to hear that.


End file.
